The Doctor's Advice To The Class Of '99
by RobotRollCall
Summary: Had the Doctor given this well-known address, it probably would have gone something like this. Based on Baz Luhrmann's 'Everybody's Free To Wear Sunscreen'.


Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '99….

Always take a banana to a party.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, bananas would be it. The long-term entertainment value of bananas has been proved by French courtesans, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own (considerable and extensive) meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now…

Enjoy the power and beauty of each regeneration.

Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of each regeneration until you've got another body. But trust me, after several centuries, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how each one was absolutely fantastic, and just how spectacularly you pulled off that decorative vegetable. You do not look as much like a scarecrow as the next one imagines.

Don't worry about the Daleks invading—or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow without your sonic screwdriver. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your complex mind. The kind that kidnaps your past regenerations and makes you collapse in the Eye of Orion at 4 PM on some idle Tuesday.

Like Alice, try to believe six impossible things before breakfast.

Run.

Don't kiss your companions, unless there's a life-saving reason for doing so, and don't put up with it when they try to kiss you. (Go and fetch their boyfriend from his stag night.)

Floss. (That's right up there with saving a girl's life.)

Don't waste your time on protesting—the school teachers are coming with you anyway. The universe is vast, and in the end, you'll be glad of the company.

Remember who you are after you regenerate; forget how tired you are of people leaving. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your TARDIS, but redo your wardrobe with every regeneration.

Don't blink.

Don't feel guilty if you don't want to settle down on a planet somewhere. The most interesting people I know didn't want, at 19, to settle down until after they'd seen the universe. Some of the most interesting 907 year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of potassium.

Be kind to your right hand—you'll miss it when the Sycorax cuts it off.

Maybe you'll be ginger, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have a clone daughter, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll wake up naked and half-dead in a hospital on Earth; maybe you'll welcome into your crew the skinny alien who tried to kill you with a rock. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your timeline is all wibbly-wobbly and rewritable. So is everybody else's.

Enjoy your sonic screwdriver. Use it in every way you can. Try not to blow it up, or worry about what certain Time Agents say about it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance. Even if you completely embarrass your companion at her wedding.

Listen to old women on buses, even if their prophecies freak you out.

Do not become Lord President, or you'll never get to leave Gallifrey.

Get to know your TARDIS. You never know when she'll have a body and try to bite you. Be nice to the Ood. They may have tried to kill you in the past, but are the ones most likely to guide you through your regeneration in the future.

Understand that companions come and go, but with a precious few, you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle and time and space, because the older you get, the more you're going to run into the people who saved the universe with you when you were young.

Live on Earth once, but leave when you can get the TARDIS working again. Live on Gallifrey once, but leave before the Time Lords go all dark side and try to destroy the universe.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: the Master always comes back, the High Council of Time Lords will insist on assigning you a new companion and sending you all over the place looking for the Keys to Time, you too will meet other versions of yourself. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, the Master was easily defeatable (and looked ridiculous in that beard), the High Council left you alone, and your other selves respected you.

Respect your other selves.

Don't expect your companions to listen to you. Maybe they'll stay where you tell them, maybe they won't get into trouble, but you never know when they'll run off and get themselves captured by faceless body-snatchers or some other nonsense like that.

Don't worry if a few of your regenerations seem a bit old—by the time you're 902, you'll look 35.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it, because really, I know what I'm talking about. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past out of a time-locked era, wiping it off, doing some jiggery-pokery on the broken parts, and regenerating it for a brand new face.

But trust me on the bananas…


End file.
